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Craig Douglas’ post here is meant primarily for LE. Don’t take this as me trying to be the guy telling LEOs how to do their job. I’m simply passing information along from SME and noted instructor, Craig Douglass of Shivworks. Douglas’ main point here is to be precise in your instructions. He also suggests emphasizing what you don’t want your subject to do. Having said all this, I find Douglas’ points to be applicable outside of LE as well.

I work in IT in the finance industry as my primary job and I also do contract work in other fields. When interacting with people, I find that precise language makes all the difference in the world in helping me help them solve their problem. Precise wording of the description of a problem makes diagnosing that problem and finding the solution faster and simpler.

“The Sheriff Office Association feels that each sheriff of their county has a pretty good feel for their constituents and their county and who should and should not have a permit,” said Sheriff Taylor. “That goes beyond just running a background check and seeing who has a felony in their background.

“We know things that the computer can’t tell us. We know things about our citizens. We know who’s going through a divorce. We know who’s in a bad time, who may be drinking too much, who may be abusive, but hasn’t necessarily crossed the line of a crime. But in our opinion, they don’t need a pistol permit.”

Thankfully, the Alabama legislature is smarter than Sheriff Heath Taylor (a typical Democrat) and the rest of the Alabama Sheriff Office Association. “Knowing things” is not probable cause to violate or deny citizens’ rights based solely on your opinion, Sheriff. If you actually respected the United States Constitution and the laws of the State of Alabama, you’d shut up and enforce the law rather than crying about your inability to make it up as you go!

Like this:

There’s a line in the film, “Two Guns,” where one of the lead characters says to the other, “Never rob a bank across from the best donut shop in three counties.” Well, this guy didn’t rob a bank and it isn’t a donut shop but, it’s close enough. Instead, he apparently burgled a favorite pit stop in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, about 20 miles north of Lafayette. It almost seems Lt. Higgins is taking that personally. I’d say I feel sorry for the suspect but, he brought it on himself and it sounds like his life is going to suck for at least a year…His burglary is considered a felony.

This is not a video for the squeamish as we will see a man shot to death. The deceased is James Bushey of Elkhart, Texas. The body camera footage we are seeing here comes from Sergeant Gabriel Green’s point of view of the incident in which Sgt. Green and his partner, Officer Kaylynn Griffin went to detain and arrest Bushey for shoplifting at a nearby Walmart.

The initial contact with Bushey is relatively calm. Green even has his back to Bushey as they walk through the restaurant. Once outside however, things go from calm to downright deadly in less than two seconds as Bushey produces a pistol from his pocket. The officers wrestle with him for a second but, Bushey breaks away and turns toward the officers again, gun in hand. Green and Griffin fire multiple shots at Bushey who turns away to run after Green and Griffin started firing. The officers fire until Bushey hits the ground, rolls over, and stops moving.

The “good news” in this is there’s no racial angle to be played here. So the media never really picked up on it and we get to examine what happens purely on the facts without the usual political/racial noise. There are some folks who will argue these officers are bad cops because they didn’t wrestle the gun away from Bushey and avoid the shooting entirely. And if you’ll notice that Bushey takes a few rounds to the back (or at least the rounds are fired while he’s facing away from Green and Griffin).

The reality is, there is no such thing as a “textbook” shooting. The “gun” turned out to be a “BB gun.” You’re lying to yourself it you think you knew that from the video alone. The whole shooting occurs in less than 8 seconds with at least 12 rounds fired in the course of four seconds. It is even more frightening from Griffin’s camera footage as she momentarily is looking down the barrel of a gun. Real life is ugly and you may not have as much time as you think.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The number of accidental shootings by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies has more than doubled in two years as the department switches to a new handgun.

There were 12 accidental discharges of weapons in 2012 and 30 last year — most of which involved the new gun, the Los Angeles Times reported (http://lat.ms/1TkMK4O).

In October, a deputy tripped over a stroller and fired a bullet through the wall of a house in Huntington Park. Last November, a deputy in Lancaster shot himself in the thigh while pulling his gun. In December, a deputy in Compton accidentally pulled the trigger on his gun as he approached a suspected stolen car and a bullet hit the door. Nobody was in the car, however.

The inspector general of the Sheriff’s Department is investigating the increase in accidental firings. But sheriff’s officials attribute the increase to the learning curve for the new weapon, the Smith & Wesson M&P9.

This article popped up just as we wrapped today’s podcast. The article skews toward blaming the gun for it’s lack of a manual safety and lighter trigger. Shooters however, recognize this for what it is…A training problem made worse by inattentive shooters/officers. In other words, negligence.

Smith & Wesson’s M&P has been with us for several years now with literally millions of rounds fired by thousands of shooters across the country. And it has gone through several design/manufacturing changes over the years like any other product. It can be had with a manual safety if one so desires but, it’s often preferred to operate without said manual safety, making operation more akin to a Glock or one of the many “double-action only” pistols on the market.

Before the 92F or any of the many “wonder-nines” ushered in with the move to semiautomatic pistols in the 1980s, cops carried revolvers more often than not. And the vast majority of those revolvers were either Colt or Smith & Wesson revolvers that, like the M&P, lack a manual safety. In those days, the answer to the problem with negligent discharges was, as it is today, simply matter of learning to keep your booger-hook off the bang-switch.

Even LA County’s trainers have admitted there seems to be a correlation between negligent discharges and officers/deputies who previously used the Beretta 92FS. It seems those officers have gotten used to the trigger being “dead” while the safety is engaged or otherwise placing their fingers on triggers when it is not appropriate to do so. Yes, the trigger stroke is shorter. Yes, it is lighter. But it is neither short enough nor light enough to discharge spontaneously. It still takes a deliberate trigger stroke by the person holding the firearm. If the officer can’t exercise proper trigger-discipline, he shouldn’t be armed as he’ll eventually have a negligent discharge with any gun you give him. Fact is, some people can’t boil water without supervision and will screw up a ham sandwich given the opportunity. We cannot save them from themselves.